Great quote. The bit that power is sought over economic returns strikes me as accurate (though of course, Orwell isn't an economist, but rather a close observer).

I've noted too that power is ordinal, where wealth is cardinal. That is, power is (largely) based on ranking, and in a power game, an actor might be willing to sacrifice a great deal of wealth to retain or gain ranking. That's almost definitionally what war is.

Economics ... tends to dismiss this possibility entirely.

Oh, I know what Economics assumes (studied the blasted stuff at uni).

But it limits consideration of what is rational to wealth accumulation (or more typically: profit maximisation.

It would be just as possible (and a somewhat better fit with observed evidence and behaviour) to consider power-ranking maximisation as the rational goal. Which would explain much of what profit-maximisation fails.

(This without even tying yourself in knots over whether or not individuals behave rationally at all, imperfect information, etc., etc.)

My main point in commenting though was just to note that Mr. Blair had come accross this realisation somewhat prior to me 😺

Right, and "rational actor" simplifies a bunch of other assumptions.

Problem of course is that the simplifications ... fail to predict much actual behaviour.

With agent-based modelling (not AI, this is stuff that started appearing in the 1980s / 1990s), it's been possible to move on from that, at least within simulations. Mathematical models still stumble on anything remotely complex though.